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The Decline of Rural America, Captured in Replicas of Decaying Homes

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If you’ve driven a rural road anywhere in the United States, you’ve probably seen the slumping remains of a farmhouse or warehouse. And while you may not have given it a second thought, Ofra Lapid sure did. Broken Houses is a focused meditation on these gutted structures, which she recreates in miniature from found photographs.

Her models are made from printed photos of real buildings she discovered online, held together with cardboard, wood, and other materials. Lapid discovered the work of an amateur photographer in North Dakota–kept anonymous at Lapid’s request–who had taken numerous detailed photos of the condemned structures.

“I saw them and I was extremely fascinated,” Lapid says. “It was back when I was still living in Israel, so it was like the other end of the world.”

After sourcing the images, Lapid removed their backgrounds before printing the facades and attaching them to cardboard cutouts. These were assembled into small replicas, sometimes with balsa or other materials added to enhance effects like support beams or rubble.

Each model is designed to be lit and viewed from a specific angle to create shadows that harmonize with the printed image. Occasionally, the slow, ongoing decay is shown in models created from photos of the same building taken at different points in time, as shown in slides nine and 10.

“For me, the thinking is more a transformation of a place that I am attracted to or that I find fascinating as a place that I want to represent,” says Lapid. “And how, from an image that I find, or from a memory, or from one place, I transform it into my own image.”

Lapid made the models between 2010 and 2011 at home in Israel. The concept and execution was relatively straightforward, but the result is nuanced and layered in ways that viewers seem to have picked up on. For Lapid, currently earning her MFA in New York, the popularity of this, her first dedicated project, has come as something of a surprise. It also seems to validate the effect she was going for.

“A lot of people immediately responded to it; it called out to their emotions, or their memory,” she says. “It’s a bit of an emotional work in a weird way.”

Lapid says she reached out to the photographer who made the images that inspired hers, but says he never replied. She’s not sure he got the message or knows what she’s done with his work, and can’t speak to his original intent in producing it. After reimagining them, she says she’s developed something of a personal relationship with the buildings he photographed.

“They’re very human to me,” she says. “Every one had an expression, sort of like you were painting portraits.”

The topic of derelict homes seems to automatically suggest a certain amount of commentary post-2008, ringing of the decay and foreclosures of homes experienced across the country. Lapid insists this wasn’t her intention, but it’s hard to deny that it adds an extra, bittersweet resonance to the work.

“It doesn’t have a statement of that sort, but I think it’s embedded there anyhow,” she says. “I was acting on a personal note, but of course it’s never just personal and I don’t live in an empty bubble.”